


Tender Fires

by aHostileRainbow



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Anniversary, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Jack Has History, Secrets, So Does Pitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8871706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aHostileRainbow/pseuds/aHostileRainbow
Summary: Alt. title: Conversations with the Dead.It had been a while, but Jack's first meeting with Pitch Black didn't happen at the Tooth Palace. (His first impression was actually worse.)





	

Aster continued following the Frostbite's traces through the woods around Burgess until he came to Jack's favorite pond, still iced over even in March. Sat at the center was Jack.

That wouldn't have been a surprise, except that Aster had been searching for Jack for weeks and now, poised beside Jack's seated figure in the first place he'd looked, was Pitch Black. Aster's first instinct was to rush out, boomerangs raised to throw, and start shouting threats. He wanted to haul Jack back to Santoff Claussen by his scrawny neck. But no.

Something was off, something made him hesitate - what was Jack doing here, out in the open again all of a sudden? And with Pitch, the both of them silent and apparently at peace, staring up at the stars. As if to answer his uncertain thoughts, Jack broke the silence.

"You haven't visited me here since..."

"The day after Easter, 1968," Pitch's smooth, oiled tones broke in, surprisingly unemotional to Aster's ears, so accustomed to hearing only taunts and madness from this creature's mouth. But Jack was not surprised. Of all things, he sounded...sad, almost regretful.

"Yeah."

The silence engulfed the odd pair again. Aster was just beginning to twitch, picking his jaw up off the forest floor and ready to charge in after all, when it was broken once more, by Pitch.

"It was not your fault. The girl."

Pitch's voice was still strangely empty, but if Aster didn't know better he might have thought there was an undertone of sympathy. Or something very like grief.

Jack winced, and Aster actually flinched when he opened his mouth because the kid sounded even blanker than Pitch this time.

"She was skating on my pond. She just wanted to see the Easter Bunny. I - I should have been here." Pitch sighed, brief and low, and then sank to his knees at Jack's side, close enough that he could have reached out and touched him with nary a stretch. With the air of an oft repeated assurance, Pitch spoke almost gently.

"It was not your fault the foolish child did not have the sense for caution in the midst of her fun."

For the first time, Jack looked away from the stars and met Pitch's eyes. Aster was frozen now, wanting to be angry or just not confused, wanting to race out, wanting to scream; but strangely, he could summon no emotion beyond his shock, hints coming together to form a truly nasty picture of that blizzard on Easter '68. He had - he had never asked, had he? He must have, but - 

There was a look in Jack's eyes now that caught at him, for all it was aimed at Pitch. From the way the Boogeyman stiffened, this was out of the norm for their apparently familiar interactions. But for the first time Aster recognized the emotion that had crinkled Jack's eyes as he looked at Pitch Black.

"It's not your fault, either, Pitch. Just because she was having too much fun to be afraid of thin ice, doesn't mean - you did what you could."

He _ached_. Some cold place in his chest was throbbing now with unfamiliar warmth, inflamed, as Aster saw Pitch Black stunned silent, staring at little Jack Frost with something terrible in his eyes. Aster didn't know what that terrible thing was, until Jack answered it, slowly, painfully tender.

"You didn't fail. It was never your fault, it," and here Jack hesitated, blinking so slowly and swallowing hard, "It wasn't anybody's fault. You did the best you could, the best anyone could."

 _Longing_. Aster stepped back, a feeling like he had been punched echoing his thoughts: longing was the terrible thing in Pitch's eyes, an old, desperate longing, the sort that had resigned itself to an eternity without hope or absolution.

Between one blink and the next, Aster watched Jack's hand twitch up off his knee as if he would comfort Pitch with a touch, try to piece together the shattered spirit beside him - but then Pitch and his wide eyes and his _longing_ had slipped away into the kid's own shadow.

Jack didn't seem surprised. Only sighing once and then looking back up at the stars for a long moment, he rose to his feet and into the air, calling, "Wind! Take me back to the workshop!" As he spun away into the night sky, Aster was left to stare at the empty ice of the pond.

This was - he didn't know what this was. He didn't understand what had just happened between Pitch and Jack, didn't want to, not yet. Aster'd been alive for a long, long time though and he knew how to meet the fresh horrors life brought him. Retreat. To the Warren, to a corner, to a safe zone until he could process.

Thumping his foot blindly, he vanished and left Jack's pond bereft of life. He wouldn't forget again - this place was only for the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Old piece, still not totally satisfied with the end. Inspired by Chapters 3 and 4 of [Finding Understanding](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8980236/3/Finding-Understanding).
> 
> Jack and Pitch make me want to write _everything_. So much headcanon.
> 
> Title quote inspiration: “Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory.” ~James Joyce,  _The Dead_


End file.
